Sunday, 1 July 2012

A picture and a thousand words.

The better together, or “vote NO” campaign launched last week, one picture reverberated through the psyche. Lamont, Darling, Davidson and Rennie; all standing together, not one able to look at the other and all declaring, “Better Together”.

Time and
again, it appeared there were words missing from the frame. The omitted words
were obvious, justified, and so very self explanatory.

The liberty
has been taken of filling in the missing words, consider what each
representative of union stands for individually and collectively, arguably
there can be no more apt and fitting banner than that pictured above.

The
horsemen of the apocalypse, collectively that is what these individuals
represent for Scots, Scotland and Scottish nationhood, if they can fool us into
supporting them.

They are on
a recruiting drive.

War, as represented by Ms. Lamont’s Labour party, they have led us into conflicts that we neither wished for nor approved, they have stripped Scots of foreign policy rights, rights that would allow us to decide where and when or in whose name our young should die. Ms. Lamont’s party has demonstrated little care for truth, legality or justice, but war is their credo when others demand. Today our soldiers are still returning home, in bags. The red horse of the apocalypse, the red rose of Labour, the red blood of our children, the red on the Union draped coffins.

Famine, the party represented by Ms. Davidson. The Conservatives are stripping the welfare state. Tory policies are demanding people are in employment even when there are no jobs. They are the party who are removing benefits from those unable to find work, letting charity or starvation run its natural course. The Tories are in Downing Street, cutting taxes at the top level while they cut child support and increase VAT. The party that is overseeing an increase in poverty and famine, an increase in those disabled denied sustenance if it is thought they may have six months more to live. The rich, the fat cats of the City are increasingly better off while the poor return to the workhouse in the Conservative world.

Pestilence, plague is ably represented by Mr. Rennie’s party of Union. They are the party that sold their souls for power, the party that has visited upon us a plague of broken promises from student fees to moderation of Tory excesses. The Liberal Democrats share the stage well with the others above; they declare they stand for federalism, they refuse to provide it. Power corrupts, and the almost absolute power of coalition government, the first time they’ve tasted any such in almost a century seems to have visited a pestilence of forgotten promises and backtracking footsteps upon the Liberal Democratic Party.

Death, Alistair Darling represents it most ably in this scenario, for as the de-facto leader of the horsemen above it can be no other way. Scots have a chance, the first in three centuries and more to bid farewell to the other horsemen unless they can be fooled into voting for war, famine and plague. Mr. Darling has the job of convincing Scots to support death and his compatriots; so far it looks like he might just manage it as the horsemen are ably assisted by the devil’s messengers in Scotland, a mostly compliant media.

Yes, in
this scenario Alistair Darling represents death, just as he did for much of the
UK’s viability when he was chancellor.

As
chancellor he should have allowed institutions to fail and supported the
individual saver. At the least there should have been new, stringent laws. Those
potential protections met their doom under his fiscal watch.

As
chancellor he should have ensured “too big to fail” did not exist in our
lexicon, as chancellor he should have reigned in the excess before the fatal
blows were delivered.

Alistair
Darling represents death, because if his cause emerges victorious it can signal
an end to Scottish aspirations for a generation, more cultural integration by
the BBC and media, a nail in the coffin of Scots individuality and sovereignty.

The parties
of the Union, like the horsemen of the apocalypse are focused on bringing
continued death and misery to Scots, they don’t care about our areas of social
deprivation, our unemployed, our industrial demise or our appalling health
statistics. If they did, these things would no longer exist in our potentially
prosperous land.

These
individuals don’t care that our children are deprived and that youth
unemployment soars faster than sales of cheap alcohol, they work for their
paymasters in the City of London.

These
individuals represent parties which are on record as stating that a
Conservative Westminster is preferable to a nationalist Holyrood, they are on
record as stating there could be a future need to bomb an independent Scotland,
and they are on record as fomenting dissent in our land to achieve their ends –
they would sooner create another Irish question with all that entails around
Scotland’s islands than see an independent land. They are on record as stating
that unemployment in the North is a price worth paying for prosperity in the
South.

Who outside
the south, in their right minds, could or would support such ideas. It
continues as the horsemen strip our wealth and strangle our green future
through unfair taxation, like grid connection tariffs, just another tax by yet
another name.

Think of what
these horsemen would have you support, individually and collectively. They
would have you support poverty, they would have you support unemployment, they
would have you support weapons of mass destruction; and they prefer any nuclear
apocalypse to be aimed at Scotland.

Think more
on what they ask, they demand that Scotland’s next generation is as bereft of
opportunity as our present, where 800,000, one in six of us had to leave our
homes or face a future as bleak as many of our ancestors knew. The clearances
continue today, we just don’t call them that anymore, the horsemen have deemed
that politically incorrect.

For three
centuries and more Scotland has seen our best and brightest flow from our land
through lack of opportunity, lack of hope, lack of promise, a lack of tomorrows.
Many would return.

We cannot
guarantee that turning our faces from the horsemen, refusing their empty words
and ignoring their hollow promises will lead us to a better tomorrow, but we
can promise our children and our grandchildren that we will give them, each and
every one, the opportunity to decide for themselves the kind of world they will
live in.

We can
promise them they will no longer have to suffer under the united yoke of the
horsemen as they seek to stabilize their extended kingdom. We can promise our
children that the future will be their own, it will be theirs to forge and not
another’s to dictate. We can promise an opportunity to achieve democracy.

That is the
gift we give our descendants by turning our backs on the horsemen.

6 comments:

As a nationalist I have no animosity towards those who place their allegiance with Unionist parties. I consider them to be either indoctrinated or ill-informed. It's their leaders who infuriate me – the MPs and MSPs who assure them that the Union is (and has always been) a great club to belong to. While the Unionist voter simply believes what he/she has been told, the Unionist politician knows THE FACTS – yet will still lie to keep the voter sweet and their job (career) secure. These pseudo-Scots, to me, are actively working against the best interests of their own country and people, and there is only one word describes such people – TRAITOR.

It is to my everlasting disappointment that such a small country as Scotland can breed so many of these creatures. The 1707 Parcel o' Rogues has nothing on the low folk who walk among us today.

Hazel, I've tried to pin down what motivates politicians who are certainly in the know, as opposed to the "blind voters", who are not aware of the truth, but continue to stick down their votes blindly for Labour in Scotland no matter what.

If these voters were told the truth, they ain't so stupid as to keep toeing their party loyalty line and that can change with the YES campaign - so there is only a gain situation for plus votes.

But in-the-know political characters are beyond contempt, if all of their motivation is based on personal security, job, status, perks, troughing - and that sadly is and can be the only dynamic at work.

Can I suggest you don't sit on the fence with your opinions Baron? ;)Yes, I get the feeling 75% are talentless bottom feeders, the last one being a lone shark that would eat any thing to sustain itself.

Hazel, you know I'm only joking! - These are all worthwhile dedicated politicians who have selflessly put service to the people way above any personal issues. The media doesn't give them fair exposure, imho.

Great article, Hazel, and a fine analogy. I would think many a historical Labour voter will be cringing with shame and disappointment at seeing how easily the pain and destruction of entire communities being decimated by Thatcher and her ilk, are now forgotten over Earl Grey and cucumber sandwiches at the Darling's.

Strikes me the four donkey-men of the apocalypse would be a more fitting description of these asses.

Still, don't they look so good together, better together even, for not one on their own has much merit as an individual politician.